Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment. The semiconductor industry continues to improve the integration density of various electronic components (e.g., transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc.) by continual reductions in minimum feature size, which allows more components to be integrated into a given area. These smaller electronic components also require smaller packages that utilize less area than the packages of the past, in some applications.
During the manufacturing of the semiconductor devices, various processing steps are used to fabricate integrated circuits on a semiconductor wafer. Generally, the processes include a chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process for planarization of semiconductor wafers, thereby helping to provide more precisely structured device features on the ICs. The CMP process is a planarization process that combines chemical removal with mechanical polishing. The CMP process is a favored process because it achieves global planarization across the entire wafer surface. The CMP polishes and removes materials from the wafer, and works on multi-material surfaces. Furthermore, the CMP process avoids the use of hazardous gasses, and/or is usually a low-cost process.
Since the CMP process is one of the most important processes for forming ICs, it is desired to have mechanisms to maintain the reliability and the efficiency of the CMP process.